Deleting files from a ext. hdd

avid.listener · Apr 28, 2010

Alright so I have an 08 macbook with snow leopard and a verbatim 1tb external harddrive. My mac has ntfs-3g and my question is, is there an app that will let me delete files from the external hdd faster? See I have about 11,000 images mainly .jpg and .png that I want to delete from my external hdd and when I delete them it takes forever. I'm really not sure if I'm being impatient or not. For example, I started deleting the 11,000 images and then went to sleep for ~4 hours and when I went to check on the progress, only 1000 or so were deleted. I thought it would be faster considering it took 10 or so minutes to delete a 20gb folder full of movies.

Lifeisabeach · Apr 28, 2010

avid.listener said:
Alright so I have an 08 macbook with snow leopard and a verbatim 1tb external harddrive. My mac has ntfs-3g and my question is, is there an app that will let me delete files from the external hdd faster? See I have about 11,000 images mainly .jpg and .png that I want to delete from my external hdd and when I delete them it takes forever. I'm really not sure if I'm being impatient or not. For example, I started deleting the 11,000 images and then went to sleep for ~4 hours and when I went to check on the progress, only 1000 or so were deleted. I thought it would be faster considering it took 10 or so minutes to delete a 20gb folder full of movies.

That seems highly abnormal. There are a couple things that come to mind. Firstly… the NTFS-3G driver doesn't allow for particularly speedy read/write operations, as compared to using Paragon NTFS or natively in Windows. But I wouldn't think it'd be THAT slow. Secondly… perhaps there is a problem with the drive itself. Use Onyx to check the SMART status. And finally… perhaps it has something to do with your trash bin and available space. If you are extremely short on disk space, then that might be it.

avid.listener · Apr 29, 2010

I guess what it is is that the free ntfs-3g version is really slow, b/c I downloaded the trial version and it was ridiculously fast. It took like 10 minutes tops to delete all 10,000 files. I'm seriously thinking about buying it once my trial is over. Thanks for your help, without out you pointing out that ntfs-3g is slow by default, I would have never started looking into upgrades/ other programs.

Lifeisabeach · Apr 29, 2010

avid.listener said:
I guess what it is is that the free ntfs-3g version is really slow, b/c I downloaded the trial version and it was ridiculously fast. It took like 10 minutes tops to delete all 10,000 files. I'm seriously thinking about buying it once my trial is over. Thanks for your help, without out you pointing out that ntfs-3g is slow by default, I would have never started looking into upgrades/ other programs.

WOW! I never would have pegged NTFS-3G as being that much slower than the other options. I guess deleting as many files at once like what you are doing really pushed its limits. Thanks for the update... this will certainly come in handy to re-reference down the road.

Deleting files from a ext. hdd

avid.listener

Lifeisabeach

avid.listener

Lifeisabeach

Shop Amazon